Working For The Man
by Evil Kitty 75
Summary: 25 years after she disappeared, the Space Corps sent the rescue ship Andromeda after the Red Dwarf. Of course, it got complicated.
1. And Here Our Troubles Began (prologue)

Working For The Man  
  
A Red Dwarf Fan Fiction  
  
By Anastasia Hunt (AnaNg718@hotmail.com)  
  
Prologue:  
  
And Here Our Troubles Began  
  
  
  
Terror and confusion reigned, as usual, aboard the Space Corps search vessel Andromeda. However, the confusion was now laced with genuine terror, something the crew wasn't used to. They all wanted to know why Miranda, the ship's 13th generation holographic computer, was ordering them into the stasis booths.  
  
Aurora Leigh Rimmer had a bad, bad feeling about this. She couldn't find Captain Briggs, nor was she gaining edification about the situation anywhere else. Not that she was entirely surprised; she was effectively second in command to a rather incompetent man who never managed to keep her in the loop. She was used to having to figure things out for herself and the crew. They would be coming to her for answers . . . it was too bad she didn't have any to give.  
  
Rory reached the stasis booths first. She leaned against the plastic coated green-gray wall, catching her breath. She had joined the Space Corps to get away from her overbearing father, Frank Rimmer, a much decorated and glorified Space Corps veteran. It was either Space Corps or marriage for Rory, and she felt she had too much potential to waste on some ungrateful slob of a husband. She had taken this mission simply to find out what had happened to her Uncle Arnold.  
  
Not that she had any great fondness for him; she'd never met him. His ship, the Red Dwarf of the Jupiter Mining Corporation, had simply disappeared about a year after she was born. Twenty-five years later, the powers that were still had some hope of finding Red Dwarf, and possibly its' crew. Rory was fascinated by the story of the Red Dwarf. It was a point of pride within the Rimmer family that Uncle Arnie was part of the legend. Rory hoped it would take at least a couple of decades to find the ship, She could use two decades away from her entire dysfunctional family.  
  
Tim Vitale came running around the corner. He plunked himself next to Rory, with a look of worry all over his slightly ratlike features. That bothered Rory. Tim was not customarily a worrier. Tim was actually a clown, but he was for once dead serious about something. He looked at her expectantly.  
  
"If you're wanting to ask me what's going on, don't bother," she advised him, "because I don't know anything. I am just as clueless and helpless as you are."  
  
Timmy looked even more worried. She felt really bad for him. She wordlessly wrapped her arms around him. Poor kid, only eighteen and entirely new to the whole notion of danger.  
  
The rest of the ship's skeleton crew showed up- Angel, Brad, Jodie, Robyn, Steve, and Drew. There was still no sign of Captain Briggs. They grouped around Rory, looking for answers. They liked and respected her, because she was competent and professional, yet was capable of fun. She felt even worse about her cluelessness in the situation . . . her complete inability to help them this time.  
  
Miranda's "face," motherly, frizzy haired and careworn, popped onto the screen.  
  
"Into the stasis booths, all of you," she ordered. The crew stood in place, awaiting an explanation. "NOW," Miranda insisted. "I promise to explain everything as soon as I can. I'll have you out soon, I promise. Now, all of you, get moving! Quickly! It's a matter of life or death!"  
  
The crew obeyed. As the doors to their booths hissed shut, they all said a quick prayer.  
  
  
  
The lights dimmed after the racket was finally quelled. Miranda shut down everything that wasn't necessary, then put herself on standby. The ship glided along after its' destiny; the greatest adventure her crew had ever known. 


	2. Wakey, Wakey To One Hell of a Surprise (...

Working' For the Man  
  
Chapter 1  
  
Wakey, Wakey to One Hell Of A Surprise  
  
  
  
In the inky darkness of space, a ship prepared to reawaken. She had silently tracked another for over 3 thousand millennia. Her crew were in the deep, oblivious sleep of stasis... had been most of those millennia. Her computer was on minimal power, silently keeping watch over her ship and her people. The Andromeda stopped suddenly. She jolted to life as though a switch had been hit.  
  
"... Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." Rory Rimmer stood expectantly in her stasis booth, waiting for something to happen. To her surprise, the doors to her booth whooshed open. She quickly realized that the stasis period was likely over. She stepped out of the booth, followed by the rest of the crew from theirs, once they saw that it was all right to emerge. They dashed to the nearest monitor, which was in a conference room on g-deck.  
  
"Miranda?" Rory politely demanded. Miranda's face popped into view. "Oh, good," she chirped, "you're just in time for the briefing. Well, sit, sit," Miranda insisted to them.  
  
Everyone got situated. Then Miranda began.  
  
"In case you didn't know, I have highly advanced stochastic capabilities..." she began, only to be interrupted by Steve Warren, Technician 2nd class.  
  
"Stock-ass-it... what?"  
  
Rory sighed. " Basically, Steve, she's psychic." She turned to Miranda. "Carry on. And make sure it's simple enough for Steve to understand." Steve was a dear boy, and actually reasonably intelligent, but he sometimes seemed like he was on a time delay from everybody else.  
  
"Right. Anyway, I tracked Red Dwarf; she was heading very quickly into deep space. I elected to put everyone into stasis. When I told Captain Briggs ..." She was interrupted agin, this time by Robyn Andrews, Navigation Officer Second Class, an almost feral, definitely feisty black woman.  
  
"Speaking of, where the hell is that useless sonofabitch?" She patted her neatly arranged black and purple fro; it wasn't for nothing that she was nicknamed "Diva".  
  
"Where the hell is Cusack? That's what really concerns me," added Angelica "Angel" MacGregor. Rowan Cusack was the ship's counselor, and sole hologram; he was considerably more popular than that drunken a-hole Briggs. Briggs had been assigned this mission simply to get him out of Space Corps' hair.  
  
"You know, if you guys would let me finish, I'd tell you what happened to them," Miranda interjected, her clipped British accent standing out from those of the crew (who were all American; with the exception of Rory, whose time at the world-renowned University of Oklahoma and five years in the Space Corps' Oklahoma branch had pretty much Americanized her accent... she hailed originally from Io, one of Jupiter's moons... they all sounded British because Io was originally colonized by the British... okay, is anyone else bored by this overdose of information? Let's just get back to the story.)  
  
Everyone looked expectantly at Miranda. Finally, Jodie Nash and Drew Roberts, both Technicians First Class, said (in unison), "Well?"  
  
"Sorry," Miranda replied, "kinda lost track." She paused, deciding the best way was just to break it to them. "Well, guys, I'm sorry to say, but Briggs is dead." The crew sat in stunned silence.  
  
"How?" Drew finally had the courage to ask.  
  
"Well, as you all were going into stasis, the captain, drunk as usual, fell down a ramp. He broke his neck and was killed instantly. I had Binky the Skutter MediHover his body to the MediUnit, where he's been cryogenically frozen the entire time you were in stasis."  
  
They sat and mulled this new information over. Briggs had been about as popular as pubic lice, but they all agreed that it was a tragic and, and were at least glad he hadn't suffered.  
  
Just as Angel was about to ask what had happened to Dr. Cusack, he bounded in, the metal "H" on his forehead gleaming. He took the seat next to Angel and to her surprise, hugged her.  
  
"How could you do that?" she asked, completely taken by surprise.  
  
"I'm sorry, hon," Cusack replied, "I didn't think you'd mind!"  
  
"No," she shot back, "I mean how is it possible? You're a hologram." It was possible because Andromeda was pulled by tractor beam into a space station, where he'd met the entity Legion, who had given him the hard light drive. Since Legion turned out to be a gestalt entity, that was comprised solely of himself, he convinced it to let him go.  
  
"I'll explain it to you later," he promised. "Right now, we've got more important things to discuss."  
  
  
  
**************************************************************************** ******************************  
  
  
  
Three million years. They'd been in stasis for three thousand millennia. The crew didn't take it well at first. They moped for weeks on end. Finally, as acting captain, Rory took charge. They came to realize that they had known there was a lot of risk involved. They had been prepared for the possibility of never seeing their loved ones again... not that that was really an issue. The one thing they had in common was lack of family, or the lack of desire to be in contact with family. They had become their own family in the two years in training for this mission, and in eight months aboard the ship.  
  
After a funeral for the (extremely) late Captain Briggs, life aboard the United States Space Vessel Andromeda settled into a routine: staying occupied until they caught up to Red Dwarf. Legion's replicator technology plus the vacuum sealed stores of supplies would keep them fed, clothed, and taken care of the rest of their natural lives, and then some. They also had all kinds of new equipment in the science lab, and a fantastic jukebox in the lounge. It wasn't a bad life, really.  
  
One day, about two months after Briggs' funeral, a blip appeared on the monitor screen on the Bridge. Tim and Drew, on their piloting shift, made an inquiry of Miranda.  
  
"Yo, Toots," Tim asked, "what the hell is that on our radar screen?"  
  
Miranda checked it out on her monitors. She then paged Rory to the Bridge. Rory came running from the lounge, her gray uniform shirt untucked from her black pleated skirt and her tie loosened. She had a Banana Bomb in hand; it was Friday, and time for cutting loose.  
  
"Well? What's going on?" she inquired. "This had better be good, guys. It's karaoke night in the Tiki Lounge, and Cusack's tanked on holo- tinis." She wasn't all that drunk, just vaguely lit.  
  
Miranda's eyes were gleaming. "Acting Captain Rimmer, we have found Red Dwarf."  
  
Rory plunked heavily into the Captain's chair. "Are you serious?"  
  
"Absolutely."  
  
Rory pulled herself together. "Well, what are you waiting for, then? Tell everybody to get their butts in here! This is big news!"  
  
It took about five minutes for the crew to gather on the Bridge. They formed around the Captain's chair and faced Miranda with the greatest anticipation.  
  
"I'm picking up a signal," Tim informed them.  
  
"Well, patch it through," several of them replied.  
  
First, there was static. "This is a distress call from the JMC mining ship Red Dwarf," came over the audio as the screen slowly was able to transmit a picture. Finally, a man could be seen. Rory gasped, then fainted, for it was her Uncle Arnie. 


End file.
